A life made almost possible--the slow byways of Tucumán, cane fields and hills--la chacra, cosecha de caña dulce... La familia Fereira, de raices y ramas... The first letter, from Raúl, "It is hard for me to explain about my being dead...", and the image of Nélida--la más bella de la provincia...

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Y los músicos en Corrientes--Puente Pesoa, rasguido doble... Nostalgias de mi litoral... Beginning with the guitar, to set the compás, slow and even, como el río mismo, to be enjoyed. Of three ages, the youngest on bandoneón, sitting quietly, without affect, until the moment of entry.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

24 February 2009. Wet streets, sun. Smiling faces at bus bench await G ride into town. All-weather vehicles, as with PG&E Terex truck across the way--the folded white ladder. For a moment: Deepak's youngest daughter, with her grandmother in sari, climbing carefully into back seat of the family's small gold-bronze SUV...

Monday, February 23, 2009

The stuff of trade, as with Walters, years ago. Credit Clothiers, Style Center for Men, where $5 a payday guaranteed layaway rights for emblems, knives, forage caps, dress blues. A Marine Corps town, season by season--the Nehru jacket, the short-sleeve suit. Ned Fink, veteran of them all, working the floor from 10 to 10, taking the young men in arm--under his saleman's wing--fitting them out with purple shirts and greenish pants--all manner of the impossible...

Buzz cuts and basic training, use of the M-1, the bayonet. The G string from the guitar--disappearing too quickly--a garrotte. Wooden rifle shanks, shape of the hand, the tree. Full-grained red walnut, steel bolt, lug.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The plutocrats will out--we live by their largesse. Or call it gen-e-ros-ity. A neo-classical marvel on lowish slope, with urns and columns, long halls, where more windows to the north, factory style, milky glass in hovering light, one clear pane with view to Sather Tower--the Campanile--a touch of Venice reborn on western hills...

Pedro Infante in "Los Pobres," standing forthright, with his señorita, on a street in the perennial Mexico pueblo, this time in the clothes of a young workingman, overalls, snug t-shirt featuring his upper arms. The peacefulness of the camera eye--framed just so--as in the YouTube clip in which he sings Cucurrucucu Paloma, battery of tender mariachi lined up like a Greek chorus in romantic overdrive, his momentarily petulant girl in the casa above, stirred from her bed by this public performance--for her alone--in the street just below...

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

11 February 2009. Chill at dawn, blankets in a heap, Natasha's pearly curl in wicker chair...

Artifacts of existence. And their parallels. A sleek cell phone, for instance--something nice, from Finland--or was it Malaysia? The Bristish grip, fanning out from Kuala Lumpur...

A leafy park in the spring, Palermo, perhaps. Constructed on the ruins of a tyrant's retreat--a master of bookkeeping who could handle the gaucho tongue. Modismos--figures of speech, moving slowly into town, where the langorous Paso Doble of the estancia assumed a louche slide, witness the arrabal--lugares sueltos, a media luz, opportunities unknown...

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Images of the Riachuelo--looking again at old book from Buenos Aires, from 1962, creamy yellow stock with small inexpert color plates tipped in... Painters of La Boca, Quinquela Martín and all the others. A blocky picturesqueness...the world simplified, made innocent. As if the local dockworkers and fisherman would be forever at their mild toils, seen against green waters and dappled sun. The bridges of the river likewise--their iron hulks becoming pennants of connection...

Mixed in throughout--the mountains of Salta and Mendoza, a balancing "imaginario..."

Monday, February 09, 2009

9 February 2009. A day's progress, milky sun, cloud or two, with bank of gray to the west...

Adrián Gorelik, from Buenos Aires...the Riachuelo revisited, a social document embedded in the landscape of the past... The Genovese, los zeneizes, playing tonight en la Bonbonera...while Adrián's tall form bends forward over sleek screen in a small Berkeley room high on the eighth floor, each click revealing "una atmósfera de fracaso..." The history a failed dream. Smoky waters in a thousand tones of gray, the forged iron bridges, derelict, set against a weighted sky...

Mataderos, Parque Patricios--the dark remnants of la barbarie, balancing Palermo, the legacy of Rosas to the north. City unfolding, as encouraged by Torquato de Alvear, el turismo, viente por ciento, with the canvasses of Cunsolo and Quinquela Martín... "Lo pintoresco y la modernidad..."

He gets up on a trick knee, stumbling slightly en route to the screen, to point out a detail with his hand--his antiochos, that is--a narrow and well-thought-out pair, held precisely in the scholar's hand--sudden golden orb on white expanse of light....

Friday, February 06, 2009

6 February 2009. Rain, blue-gray skies, green umbrella passing... Two cars, side by side in forlorn lot--a sedan and van, origins unknown. Girl with pale skin and dark dark hair, bending forward with folded laundry held close, reaching with her other hand to unlock door...

As in a dance. The zamba, perhaps. Una vuelta entera, arresto, medio vuelta. El campo de baile--an arena of meanings...

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Folclore in the supper club, "Recuredos de Salta," a zamba, filmed in maybe 1962. Louche figures seen at table, from behind, while in the aisle, an impeccably done-up pair of dancers appear, in local dress. Man's hand reaching behind his back to adjust the ceremonial facon--unfelt before, a kind of fumbly prop--while the meal progresses, under ceiling fans. Back of room, leaning against hallway wall, two figures--a man and a woman--kitchen help, pausing to watch...

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

4 February 2009. Milky light, sun. Man with with checked coat and widow's peak, walking a sheepdog on long leather leash, just behind pale blue of PG&E truck. Laundry and crows to the rear.

Abysinnia--the good doctor's farewell as he steps through the portal. German folksongs on occasion--when in the mood, or two-part carols, pulled from a bank of sometimes fading lore. All seems to fade--what we take in, what we forget. A vehicle with goods sliding out the back...

But not Alice--her every jot intact. A telephone number from 1932, for instance--ready at the go--or the recipe for fatiman, folded diamonds with the ends tucked back in, dusted in powdered sugar... at Christmastime...

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Re-reading Mansilla, beyond Aillancó-una parada en route to Leubucó, the place where the horses were stolen. Si perdieron unos caballos? Always the same question--befitting these plains, where a horse is a ship, an eagle, a saving grace. Cloud of darkening gray-brown dust on the horizon, whipping this way and that, now larger, now smaller, re-emerging. The scout: Indios, mi colonel...boleando, guanaco...

Monday, February 02, 2009

2 February 2009. Sudden shadow of green bus, now rumbling off down the street. Yellow sun on faded blue sky...

One creature and another. Encounter and detente. "A young bull elephant," although no elephants are truly young. You can look this up anywhere--absolute age: Pleistocene, as shown in Smithsonian-style gouache, trunk raised in defiance (even then), while a Bert Lahr lion paces angrily just in front. Concocted, of course, the scene--our presence more in the form of a late-model tondeau pickup, or the small copper-brown SUV, oversized off-road tires, in which Lina and her daughter arrive, smiling, smiling, in delicate sari, almost from Nepal...

About Me

The painter Anthony Dubovsky was born in San Diego, California, in 1945. He studied with Willard Midgette at Reed College, and has lived in Warsaw, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, and Jerusalem. "An exploration in which the goal becomes a part of the discovery..." You can reach him at anthonydubovsky.com